Join Lieutenant Suarez, a valiant member of the Imperial Marines, as he finds himself entangled in a web of intrigue and danger. When the Human ambassador engages in a forbidden affair with a Farsalian princess, the consequences prove dire, and the blame falls upon Suarez's shoulders. Little does he know that the ambitious Emperor of all Humankind, Stanislaus, eagerly awaits a chance to initiate an all-encompassing war. Buckle up for heart-pounding action as Suarez and his courageous crew dive headfirst into desperate battles, embark on perilous secret missions, and navigate the complexities of romantic entanglements. The fate of galaxies hangs in the balance as interstellar plots and court intrigues propel this grand space opera to unparalleled heights. Will Lieutenant Suarez rise to the occasion and save the day, or will the universe succumb to the clutches of war?
Published on the eightieth anniversary of the 1918 Armistice, this book tells the story of a year during which the casualty lists on all sides were longer, the turns of fortune were most remarkable, and action was most intense.
“Monumental… [A] vast and detailed study that is surely the finest single-volume history of World War II. Richard Overy has given us a powerful reminder of the horror of war and the threat posed by dictators with dreams of empire.” – The Wall Street Journal A thought-provoking and original reassessment of World War II, from Britain’s leading military historian A New York Times bestseller Richard Overy sets out in Blood and Ruins to recast the way in which we view the Second World War and its origins and aftermath. As one of Britain’s most decorated and respected World War II historians, he argues that this was the “last imperial war,” with almost a century-long lead-up of global imperial expansion, which reached its peak in the territorial ambitions of Italy, Germany and Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s, before descending into the largest and costliest war in human history and the end, after 1945, of all territorial empires. Overy also argues for a more global perspective on the war, one that looks broader than the typical focus on military conflict between the Allied and Axis states. Above all, Overy explains the bitter cost for those involved in fighting, and the exceptional level of crime and atrocity that marked the war and its protracted aftermath—which extended far beyond 1945. Blood and Ruins is a masterpiece, a new and definitive look at the ultimate struggle over the future of the global order, which will compel us to view the war in novel and unfamiliar ways. Thought-provoking, original and challenging, Blood and Ruins sets out to understand the war anew.
The Turkish Front in World War I was an historically important campaign as the destruction of the Ottoman Empire led to the political turmoil of the Middle East. But it also had a big emotional pull. This book contains extracts from the letters, diaries and other papers of those involved.
Lieutenant Suarez of the Imperial Marines is facing a sticky situation. The Human ambassador is having an affair with a Farsalian princess, which leads to an incident for which Suarez gets the blame. Fortunately -- or unfortunately -- for him, Emperor of all Humankind Stanislaus has been looking for an excuse to start a war anyway. Desperate battles, secret missions, romantic entanglements, interstellar plots, and court intrigues now await Suarez and his doughty band in A Grand Imperial War.
The shadow of the Somme has lain across the twentieth century. For many it is the ultimate symbol of the folly and futility of war. Others see it as a hallmark of heroic endeavour and achievement. This book offers a remarkably fresh perspective on the bitterly fought 1916 campaign; it also describes the later battles of the Somme in the Great War's final year, 1918. Using hitherto unpublished evidence from the archives of the Imperial War Museum, it tells its powerful and dramatic story through the letters and diaries of those who were there. Distinguished military historian Malcolm Brown has woven the many and varied accounts by well over a hundred participants - mainly British, but with not a few Germans - into a rich tapestry of experience. 'Admirable . . . If you can buy only one book on the Somme, it should be Malcolm Brown's powerful and scholarly account' Richard Holmes, TIMES EDUCATIONAL SUPPLEMENT
As China reclaims its position as a world power, Imperial Twilight looks back to tell the story of the country’s last age of ascendance and how it came to an end in the nineteenth-century Opium War. As one of the most potent turning points in the country’s modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today’s China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to “open” China even as China’s imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country’s decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China’s advantage. The book paints an enduring portrait of an immensely profitable—and mostly peaceful—meeting of civilizations that was destined to be shattered by one of the most shockingly unjust wars in the annals of imperial history. Brimming with a fascinating cast of British, Chinese, and American characters, this riveting narrative of relations between China and the West has important implications for today’s uncertain and ever-changing political climate.
In the early twentieth century, the new technology of flight changed warfare irrevocably, not only on the battlefield, but also on the home front. As prophesied before 1914, Britain in the First World War was effectively no longer an island, with its cities attacked by Zeppelin airships and Gotha bombers in one of the first strategic bombing campaigns. Drawing on prewar ideas about the fragility of modern industrial civilization, some writers now began to argue that the main strategic risk to Britain was not invasion or blockade, but the possibility of a sudden and intense aerial bombardment of London and other cities, which would cause tremendous destruction and massive casualties. The nation would be shattered in a matter of days or weeks, before it could fully mobilize for war. Defeat, decline, and perhaps even extinction, would follow. This theory of the knock-out blow from the air solidified into a consensus during the 1920s and by the 1930s had largely become an orthodoxy, accepted by pacifists and militarists alike. But the devastation feared in 1938 during the Munich Crisis, when gas masks were distributed and hundreds of thousands fled London, was far in excess of the damage wrought by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz in 1940 and 1941, as terrible as that was. The knock-out blow, then, was a myth. But it was a myth with consequences. For the first time, The Next War in the Air reconstructs the concept of the knock-out blow as it was articulated in the public sphere, the reasons why it came to be so widely accepted by both experts and non-experts, and the way it shaped the responses of the British public to some of the great issues facing them in the 1930s, from pacifism to fascism. Drawing on both archival documents and fictional and non-fictional publications from the period between 1908, when aviation was first perceived as a threat to British security, and 1941, when the Blitz ended, and it became clear that no knock-out blow was coming, The Next War in the Air provides a fascinating insight into the origins and evolution of this important cultural and intellectual phenomenon, Britain's fear of the bomber.
Popular impressions of the imperial Japanese army still promote images of suicidal banzai charges and fanatical leaders blindly devoted to their emperor. Edward Drea looks well past those stereotypes to unfold the more complex story of how that army came to power and extended its influence at home and abroad to become one of the world's dominant fighting forces. This first comprehensive English-language history of the Japanese army traces its origins, evolution, and impact as an engine of the country's regional and global ambitions and as a catalyst for the militarization of the Japanese homeland from mid-nineteenth-century incursions through the end of World War II. Demonstrating his mastery of Japanese-language sources, Drea explains how the Japanese style of warfare, burnished by samurai legends, shaped the army, narrowed its options, influenced its decisions, and made it the institution that conquered most of Asia. He also tells how the army's intellectual foundations shifted as it reinvented itself to fulfill the changing imperatives of Japanese society-and how the army in turn decisively shaped the nation's political, social, cultural, and strategic course. Drea recounts how Japan devoted an inordinate amount of its treasury toward modernizing, professionalizing, and training its army-which grew larger, more powerful, and politically more influential with each passing decade. Along the way, it produced an efficient military schooling system, a well-organized active duty and reserve force, a professional officer corps that thought in terms of regional threat, and well-trained soldiers armed with appropriate weapons. Encompassing doctrine, strategy, weaponry, and civil-military relations, Drea's expert study also captures the dominant personalities who shaped the imperial army, from Yamagata Aritomo, an incisive geopolitical strategist, to Anami Korechika, who exhorted the troops to fight to the death during the final days of World War II. Summing up, Drea also suggests that an army that places itself above its nation's interests is doomed to failure.
An unrivalled and readable introduction to the years of Trench Warfare' TESThe First World War was won and lost on the Western Front. Covering the whole war, from the guns of August 1914 to the sudden silence of the November 1918 Armistice, the IWM Book of the Western Front reveals what life was really like for the men and women involved. With first-hand accounts of off-duty entertainments, trench fatalism, and going over the top, this is an extremely important contribution to the continuing debate on the First World War. Malcolm Brown has updated this edition, introducing new evidence on sex and homosexuality, executions, the treatment or mistreatment of prisoners and shell shock.'A blockbuster . . . as near as anyone is likely to get to the authentic life of the trenches' Yorkshire Post
